April 2, 2006

"Being asked to be in that band was a pivotal moment in my life," says Case. ''It was very validating. They were so talented and amazing, and that's when I started realizing that music is probably going to be at the forefront of what I do."

By this point, all this might be a yawn if Morrissey weren't so good at pain and angst. God knows he doesn't get any help from his latest music. Mostly, it's boilerplate, post-Smiths, Morrissey solo fare.

While a book such as Ulysses can now appear to creak under the weight of its reputation, O’Brien’s works seem more exhilarating and apposite than ever. With its novel- within-a-novel-within-a-novel structure At Swim-Two-Birds, his 1939 fictional debut, anticipates the deconstructive conceits of postmodern fiction and is more fun to boot, with its recasting of Irish mythology and its celebration of sloth. Then there is the singular vision of The Third Policeman, with its amoral murderer lost in a hellish world where garda sergeants are more bike than man, thanks to molecular exchange. It is as bleak and morbidly funny as anything by Beckett, only more recognisably Irish: hell looks alarmingly like the midlands, and all the blacker for that.

Mitchell has not decided to try and follow-up his 2003 blockbuster, Cloud Atlas, with another ambitious, globe-trotting novel. "Oh," he says at one point, discussing the intricacies of Black Swan Green, "it feels so good not to be talking about Cloud Atlas."